Common Options for API Tools

--region region

Overrides the region specified in the EC2_URL environment variable.

Default: The EC2_URL environment variable, or us-east-1.ec2.amazonaws.com if the environment variable is not set.

Example: --region eu-west-1

-U URL

URL is the uniform resource locator of the Amazon EC2 web service entry point.

Default: The EC2_URL environment variable, or http://ec2.amazonaws.com if the environment variable is not set.

Example: -U http://ec2.amazonaws.com

-K EC2-PRIVATE-KEY

The private key to use when constructing requests to Amazon EC2.

Default: The value of the EC2_PRIVATE_KEY environment variable.

Example: -K pk-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBZQ55CLO.pem

-C EC2-CERT

The X.509 certificate to use when constructing requests to Amazon EC2.

Default: The value of the EC2_CERT environment variable.

Example: -C cert-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBZQ55CLO.pem

-v

Displays verbose output by showing the SOAP request and response on the command line. This is particularly useful if you are building tools to talk directly to our SOAP API.

--show-empty-fields

Shows empty columns as (nil).

--debug

Prints internal debugging information. This is useful to assist us when troubleshooting problems.

-?

Displays help.

-

If - is specified as an argument to one of the parameters, a list of arguments are read from standard input. This is useful for piping the output of one command into the input of another.

Example: ec2-describe-instances | grep running | cut -f 2 | ec2-terminate-instances -i -